SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " medic " 6,834 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
U of A dismantles Health Sciences unit, disperses functions university-wide
University of Arizona Health Sciences — which has housed the colleges of medicine in Tucson and Phoenix, and the colleges of nursing, pharmacy and public health — is being dismantled
Global Broadcasters Take ‘Best Medicine’ As Raft Of Deals Land For Fox Series
EXCLUSIVE: A slew of international deals for Best Medicine have closed. Sky has scored UK rights for its channels and NOW streaming service, marking a kind of homecoming for the show, which is based o...
President’s message: Progress and opportunity for science and medicine
his is an extraordinary moment in time for the biomedical sciences. Seven decades ago, the discovery of the structure of DNA sparked a revolution in understanding life. In the decades since, the knowledge of fundamental biology we have accumulated has led to innovative treatments for many difficult-to-treat diseases, and many more are now within reach....
The Science Of Vitamin Patches: Do They Work And Are They Worth Your Money?
Some medicines can be successfully delivered by skin patch. Quite a lot can’t.
‘Smart’ public health vending machine expands access to free health resources in York County
Leaders from Penn State College of Medicine, WellSpan Health, York County and local community organizations gathered to celebrate the launch of an interactive public health vending machine.
23 student researchers receive 2026 NSF fellowships - College of Arts and Sciences
The National Science Foundation awarded work in STEM-related fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and marine ecology.
SGMC Health Presents 2026 Residency Awards
SGMC Health’s Graduate Medical Education (GME) program held its annual Residency Awards recognizing outstanding residents and faculty.
Searching for health insurance? Keep scrolling to avoid government impersonators
When you search online, do you click the first result you see? You’re not alone. But that habit could cost you — especially if you’re searching for health insurance or government healthcare programs like Medicare.
Spectrum News: Wright State University and Premier Health receive $2.5M grant to expand street medicine
For people experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, they also often face overlapping challenges like chronic illness, behavioral health conditions and substance use that makes day to day living even more difficult. Often a routine trip to the doctor is the … Continue reading →
Fewer options in Maine: Health insurance company announces plan to leave the state
Only four companies have submitted rate proposals to provide health insurance in Maine in 2027. One company is leaving the state.
Michigan’s Medicaid expansion improved both health and finances
Michigan’s Medicaid expansion, called the Healthy Michigan Plan, helped individuals’ physical, mental and financial health, and supported the hospitals and clinics used by all Michiganders.
Mark Nelson, Ph.D., Elected to the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences
Mark Nelson, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor and chair of pharmacology at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, has been named a 2026 Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Michigan’s Medicaid expansion improved both health and finances
Michigan’s Medicaid expansion, called the Healthy Michigan Plan, helped individuals’ physical, mental and financial health, and supported the hospitals and clinics used by all Michiganders.
Novant Health invites public to explore Scotts Hill Medical Center
Novant Health will be hosting a Community Day at its Scotts Hill Medical Center this weekend.
Tennessee to report disabled immigrant kids getting public healthcare to ICE, advocates say
Scores of low-income immigrant children living with critical illnesses could soon lose access to life-sustaining medical care after Tennessee officials directed public health departments to verify their immigration status and report to the federal government, according to the Tennessee Justice Center. The Tennessee Department of Health is targeting Children’s Special Services, a last-resort public health […]
A San Antonio middle school is banking on the sports medicine industry
The sports medicine field is expected to grow in Texas. One San Antonio middle schools hopes it can shape the industry’s future physicians.
Trump’s health care affordability czar touts Medicaid cuts to hospital leaders
Hospital execs say they're working to mitigate the impacts of the looming cuts.
Medical Advances Are Keeping a Health Reporter Busy
A conversation with Gina Kolata, who covers breakthroughs in medical science.
BEACON: How Benchmarking Combats the Reproducibility Crisis in Modern Science
A new initiative called BEACON aims to advance scientific reproducibility by uniting siloed benchmarking efforts across biomedical research.
Ohio lawmakers backtrack after trying to restrict Medicaid home healthcare
Ohio Republicans have reversed course after their proposal to restrict home healthcare under the state's Medicaid program received massive backlash.
Safer rides, faster care: Mental health, medical providers back patient transport bills
19 more medical schools join RFK nutrition ed program
Eight accrediting organizations have also joined the initiative to incorporate nutrition education into doctors' training
Star Trek star's family awarded $13M in heart failure malpractice case
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura in Star Trek, died from undiagnosed and untreated heart failure after seeking medical treatment.
We can create the future of science right now
Paul Litvak is the founder and Executive Director of the Robyn Dawes Institute and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon where he studied emotions and the sunk cost bias. Over 15 years in industry, he solved a wide range of challenging technical problems. At Meta he created models optimizing the ad review process. At Google he ran experiments to measure social influence. At Airbnb, he was a product manager leading machine learning teams optimizing search ranking and price suggestions. He also co-founded and led product at Rhythmic Health, a venture-backed biosensing startup, creating an accurate low cost system using a color changing strip and a smart phone to measure salivary lactate. The bottleneck At this point, it is uncontroversial to say that science needs to stop using the PDF article as the unit of knowledge and currency. The unbearable slowness of scientific publishing, the profit motive and margins: I’m not saying anything new. The PDF also sucks because it’s hard to extract structured information, which makes it hard to do evidence synthesis. As a result, we do much less evidence synthesis than is needed. And evidence synthesis ultimately undergirds most policy and medical decision-making. I can see second-by-second real-time odds for any sporting or newsworthy event, but a school board can’t see the best evidence on whether their 8th graders should be taught algebra. As a society, we don’t treat this as an important problem. Again, not controversial. Not only is the problem well understood, but the solution has already been laid out. What we need is AI-assisted living evidence synthesis - (1) an open knowledge graph of atomic claims, (2) claims linked to evidence, (3) assessment and synthesis of each piece of evidence, and (4) continuous updating with new data. What few realize (yet) is that the technical capacity to build this vision for a significant portion of science already exists. Not only that, scientists and startup teams are already building many of these components. I know this because I’ve been surveying the space and talking to many of the builders. There are some missing pieces: for example, evaluations of how well some of the components work. But at this point, most of what’s missing is a fully end-to-end working integration of all of these parts. In the rest of this essay, I’m going to lay out all the parts of a working living evidence layer for science and who is working on them, and propose concrete next steps for building this system. What’s now possible The diagram above outlines the components of a living evidence synthesis platform, including some of the teams working on each component1. Scientific PDFs are processed into claims with associated evidence. The evidence is subjected to a forensic audit, methodological evaluation and robustness and reproducibility checks. Finally it’s given a weight in a continuously updating synthesis. What follows is a description and status of each component and a few of the teams working on them. Document understanding The first thing you need to be able to do is turn an article into structured data. Mostly that means parsing PDFs. There are often multicolumn layouts that confuse non-specialized PDF to text processing libraries. For scientific papers, there is the added complexity of parsing formulas and tables and figures. This is a really hot area - there are startups offering APIs, and it seems like a new open source package gets posted to Github every few weeks. What follows isn’t exhaustive. A package called GROBID was the state of the art for a while, they didn’t update their package for nearly two years until very recently. In the meantime reducto.ai released an AI powered PDF extraction API, PaddleOCR became popular, IBM released a model called Docling, and both Mistral and Gemini created models and libraries. I also know of at least one other well-funded psychology research group working on a paper parser. By contrast, there are few open evals in this space, with no extensive evals for complex table comprehension in particular. Nonetheless, I’m confident this will be a solved problem soon, given the combination of LLM advances and developer interest. Hypothesis level extraction There has been increasing interest in comprehending the extracted text of papers and linking information to evidence for each hypothesis. A lot of work has already been done. Trialstreamer (Marshall et al. 2020) and RobotReviewer LIVE (Marshall et al. 2023) demonstrated automated extraction of trial population, intervention, and outcome at scale on clinical RCTs. PaperQA2 (Skarlinski et al. 2024) and Ai2 ScholarQA (2024) extended this to retrieval-augmented question answering with citation grounding. Elicit, Consensus, and SciSpace operationalized claim-level extraction for end users. OpenEval (Booeshaghi et al. 2026) is the most recent and most ambitious: 1.96 million atomic claims extracted from 16,087 eLife manuscripts using Claude Sonnet 4.5, grouped into ~299,000 results, with LLM evaluations showing 81% agreement with human peer review on a 2,487-paper subset. None of these solutions link claims to test-statistics, as you would need to evaluate randomized controlled trials. This is why I built the evidence.guide API - to extract hypotheses and associated test statistics from behavioral science papers. The best public eval of this kind of extraction I’m aware of comes from the recent SCORE project - they had humans code thousands of psychology papers to extract their claims by hand. It would be extremely helpful to the world if all scientific PDFs were available as structured open data. I’ve been working to make this happen, both directly at Berkeley and through coordination with large entities I can’t yet speak of; as hard as it is to do, I think it’s possible2. Forensic audit A lot of work has been done on forensic audit, but some gaps remain. Of course, for biology papers that rely on images for evidence, there are a variety of tools (notably Proofig and ImageTwin) to spot anomalies. These are still well short of what sleuths like Elizabeth Bik can do on her own, but these tools are constant companions among fraud analysts. There’s someone working on auditing Excel files for anomalies, and a number of teams are automating numerical checks like GRIM and SPRITE, including Scrutiny project, the INSPECT-SR team as well as statcheck. The regcheck team is building a way to use AI to compare preregistrations to analyses in papers, to ensure there aren’t significant deviations. Nonetheless, there are many other kinds of anomalies to screen for, both public and less publicly known. And there are no formal evals for anomaly detection that I’m aware of. Still, there’s a lot to draw from in this space and I’m pretty certain we will be able to scan papers for most kinds of obvious anomalies in the near future. Methodological review This area has been white hot, though I fear for many of the startups in this space, because this capability may become commoditized. There are at least six different AI peer review companies, including Refine.ink, Reviewer3, ReviewerZero.ai, Q.E.D. Science, Paper Wizard, and Isitcredible. Coarse (a pun on refine) was also recently created as an open source alternative. These systems provide qualitative feedback on the content of papers, spotting methodological weaknesses and mathematical errors. They seem to work pretty well, and many academics report bitterly that they exceed the average quality of typical peer reviewers. But there are few evals here either. What evals exist so far involve using LLM-as-judge (circularity problems abound) or comparing against human reviews of questionable quality. What you’d ideally want is an eval that measures capturing known errors in papers3. Reproducibility and robustness Another active area has been using AI agents to automate computational reproducibility4 and robustness5 checks in papers that report numerical results. For more recent papers where data and code are available, AI agents can see whether they can re-run the analyses and produce the numbers reported in the published paper. In addition to a handful of individual academics who have been experimenting using Claude Code for this, the Institute for Replication is a leading group working on building an end to end system. The evals related to this problem are the most mature, with CORE-Bench (Siegel, Kapoor, Narayanan 2024) and PaperBench (OpenAI 2025) available to benchmark agents on this task. There is also work on getting AI agents to test alternative ways of analyzing the data to ensure the results are robust to small analytic design choices. Synthesis This is the most underdeveloped area where significant investment is required. Although some automated evidence synthesis systems exist — for example, otto-sr is building an AI agent to write systematic reviews — none of these incorporate the full range of paper level signals to weight evidence appropriately. Nor is there anything like an eval or a gold standard for a good systematic review. Arguably Cochrane reviews are the closest we have to gold standard human systematic reviews, though I’ve heard academics in the know complain about their uneven quality. A key question for a synthesis platform is how to weight anomalies and methodological issues in assessing the quality of a piece of evidence. This is an unsolved problem and one I’m very keen to work on. Continuous updating There are many pieces of basic infrastructure available for monitoring for new research and initiating updates. OpenAlex is the current open citation graph. Retraction Watch integrated into Crossref in October 2023. Scite tracks how citations support, contrast, or mention prior claims. The Living Evidence Network demonstrated continuous-update workflows in clinical guidelines. Engineering this is a relatively straightforward task. When you look over this technical architecture and all the progress being made, it’s hard not to be optimistic that a living guide to scientific evidence will be built. The stakeholders are ready The social infrastructure for this is starting to coalesce — it’s not just a pie in the sky academic exercise to imagine this coming into existence. Institutions like the Center for Open Science, the Institute for Replication, the INSPECT-SR, the Living Evidence Network and more are all working on scaling work to improve research quality. Funders are also aligned. The Sloan Foundation has funded living evidence work through COS. Coefficient Giving supports the Institute for Replication and COS. The Astera Institute and the Institute for Progress have shown interest in this space. NIH has established an Office for Replication and Reproducibility. Although there are (very unfortunately) serious headwinds in science funding generally, there is an active group of funders interested in metascience. A brief word about what I’ve been doing at RDI. First, as a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley I’ve been actively figuring out how a non-profit and a public university can conduct and make public the results of large-scale academic article data mining. With some of the money I raised from donors, I commissioned a legal analysis of recent case law and publisher text data mining (TDM) agreements in order to understand whether a massive open data mining of academic articles is possible (with caveats, it is). I’ve also been working to bring together stakeholders in this space, and identify gaps. I’ve also been doing some software development in this space, with more to come. A pilot proposal The assumption undergirding all of this is that an AI, given all this information, would make the right judgment about a scientific claim with lots of conflicting evidence, weighing all the factors appropriately. That’s the hypothesis we need to test. Randomized control trial research is the best place to focus on first. RCTs are used to make many of the important decisions in society - from medical trials to public policy changes. And they use a relatively uniform set of inferential statistics with lots of known and available diagnostics. Behavioral science experiments, within the broader realm of RCTs, should be first used as a testbed whose results can be generalized. Because behavioral science is at the vanguard of open science practices, replications abound (there are thousands of them) to serve as ground truth training data. Key Hypothesis Therefore the pilot would test, in behavioral RCTs that have been replicated, whether the quality of evidence for a claim can be used to accurately predict whether that claim will replicate. Secondary Hypotheses Compared to claims that replicated, non-replicated claims demonstrate a greater share of forensic anomalies in their source literatures. Hypothesis level claim and statistic extraction is accurate enough to scale living evidence without onerous human review costs. Replication prediction is more accurate than prediction markets6 or journal prestige. If all the different quality signals we gather do accurately predict which studies will replicate, then we can use that model to score evidence to power the living evidence layer. Why this is informative regardless of outcome If the pilot succeeds, the architecture extends to medical RCTs (where Living Evidence already operates and integration is mostly about claim representation), then to slices of basic biology with stable replication structure. If it fails, the field learns which quality signals are load-bearing and which ones metascience has oversold. Either result is a contribution to knowing what the literature supports. Implications for funders Because this burgeoning ecosystem of builders already exists, a well-informed philanthropic or government funder could play a crucial catalyzing role in bringing this future about. They could play at least three roles: creating open structured datasets, publishing open benchmarks and incentivizing the solving of key technical challenges. First, open archives of papers that the government maintains, like PubMed, could be turned into structured data amenable to large scale metascience and claim aggregation. I know the US government already has an interest in doing this, though some key open questions remain unanswered. How do you determine the best models and systems for accurately extracting information from papers? How can you establish a robust way to allow researchers to flag errors and correct them? And finally, how do you create a legal regime in working with publishers to maximize the scope of available papers? For the latter, a university or a private philanthropy may be better positioned to make structured data publicly available under journal subscription terms or fair use. Philanthropists or government funders could also coordinate to create or commission benchmarks that evaluate whether important problems have been solved. For example, an open benchmark for claim extraction from a range of different scientific article types would be extremely helpful. Ensuring the underlying data are accurate is vital for creating these evaluations. I’ve discussed opportunistically using various human-created datasets for this purpose, but a consistent problem is that errors in human data make it difficult for them to serve as a gold standard. Finally, with structured data and benchmarks available, the government or private philanthropy could use them to incentivize groups to develop machine learning systems that meet these benchmarks. Prizes are one potentially valuable tool for this. For example, you could establish a prize for a system that accurately updates a living meta-analysis for a small set of claims. Prizes are particularly useful as signals of problem importance, and can help create vibrant ecosystems of public and private research—see, for example the role the government played in kickstarting the current work on nuclear fusion. Conclusion The drawbacks of the current scientific publishing system are known. Scientists agree, metascientists agree, philanthropists agree: the published PDF plus citation graph isn’t the right substrate for maintaining a representation of the evidence base in science. The pieces needed to build the alternative either already exist or are rapidly taking shape. The community is forming around exactly this problem, with concrete partnerships and shared infrastructure. A pilot should start on behavioral science RCTs because that’s the slice of empirical science most amenable to legibility, where replication ground truth is richest, and where the failure modes are best documented. What’s been missing is the galvanizing mission to assemble these pieces into something that works. That’s what I’m proposing to build. *** 1 I have a broader field map that I’ll release publicly soon. This is me, building in public! 2 If this is something that you are excited about, please reach out and talk to me. 3 More on this very soon too! 4 This tests whether, given the code and the data, you can get the same statistics as reported in the published paper. 5 This tests whether the results are the same as a paper’s given alternative analytical decisions in conducting the analysis (like outlier omission). Closely related is the idea of a “multiverse” where you come up with many different ways of answering the same underlying research question with the same data, and test whether the results hold in all those alternative methods. There’s been work on the latter as well. 6 Some of the replications, e.g. those from the SCORE project, had paired the experiments with forecasts from prediction markets. So we get to look at this for free.
Arsenal: Head of sports medicine Dr Zafar Iqbal leaving club
Arsenal's head of sports medicine Dr Zafar Iqbal is leaving after two years at the club.
Wake County Commissioners to hear from WakeMed on potential merger with Atrium Health
WakeMed has defended the merger with Atrium Health, saying it would help reduce costs for supplies, medicines and equipment.
SGMC Health Celebrates Graduation of Resident Physicians, Retaining Talent in South Georgia
SGMC Health celebrated a major milestone in its medical education program on Friday, June 5, with the graduation of 18 resident physicians
3 Southern Ohio VA facilities go live on Oracle Health EHR
Before logging on to the long-awaited electronic health record system, employees at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center were reportedly "tense, but ready."
LifeNet Health Expands Its Global Regenerative Medicine Platform, Transitioning HCM Medical into LifeNet Health Advanced Xeno-Therapeutics
/PRNewswire/ -- LifeNet Health announced today that HCM Medical has transitioned into LifeNet Health Advanced Xeno‑Therapeutics ("LifeNet Health AXT"), marking...
Texas’ health care workforce has increased 123% in 30 years. State officials say it isn’t enough
Health care is the largest and fastest growing industry in Texas — but the workforce isn't growing fast enough to meet increasing demand. Workforce shortages are getting worse, according to testimony from state officials during a House Committee on Public Health hearing.
Community paramedic program answers call for access to care
In Bismarck, North Dakota, a community paramedic program has shortened the distance between patients and providers.
Hugh Laurie slams writer for criticizing 'House' 14 years after its finale: 'Wasn't meant for you'
Hugh Laurie channeled Dr. Gregory House himself when responding to criticism of the medical drama on which he starred for eight years: 'It wasn't meant for you.'
Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Unit Portsmouth Earns Top Marks in Radiation Health Audit
The Radiation Health team at Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Unit Portsmouth has earned top marks following a recent audit conducted by the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, placing the program among the top 10 percent of Radiation Health programs across the U.S. Navy.
Stepful banks $55M to scale AI-powered medical training to boost the workforce pipeline
Healthcare staffing shortages are a near-universal problem for healthcare providers. | The company currently works with more than 35 major healthcare systems and has graduated over 32,000 practice-ready healthcare workers since its founding.
open 42-bed medical rehabilitation hospital in South Point, Ohio
PAM Health, a leading national healthcare provider, in partnership with regional healthcare leader Marshall Health Network, announced plans to open a 42-bed physical medicine and rehabilitation hospital in South Point, Ohio. This location will be PAM Health’s third hospital in Ohio, joining PAM Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Miamisburg and PAM Health Specialty Hospital of Miamisburg. Located at 510 Commerce Lane in South Point, Ohio, the hospital is expected to open in October […]
Protecting Heart Health in an Era of Temperature Extremes
Extreme heat and cold are growing cardiovascular risks that can trigger heart attacks, strokes, heart failure and sudden cardiac death, according to a recent scientific statement by experts at Weill Cornell Medicine and other leading institutions.
She Paid $20,000 For Her Own Pregnancy, Then Built The Fix For Medicaid Moms
Malama Health's doula-led model cuts preterm births 45% for Medicaid moms. Mika Eddy is building the maternal care infrastructure America never had.
Main Line Health, United Healthcare contract dispute could leave 32,000 patients out-of-network later this month
The nonprofit health system's current UnitedHealthcare contracts for employer-sponsored insurance and Medicare Advantage plans expire June 30. The plans cover 32,000 Main Line patients.
Texas’ healthcare workforce has increased 123% in 30 years. State officials say it isn’t enough
Healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in Texas — but the workforce isn't growing fast enough to meet increasing demand. Workforce shortages are getting worse, according to testimony from state officials during a House Committee on Public Health hearing.
A San Antonio middle school is banking on the sports medicine industry
The sports medicine field is expected to grow in Texas. One San Antonio middle schools hopes to boost interest in the industry.
Low pay plagues Congo health workers
MONGBWALU, Congo -- The front line is wearing thin in Congo's battle with the world's latest Ebola virus outbreak, as low pay adds to the fatigue plaguing the nation's healthcare workers, says one medical authority.
AMA To Launch U.S. Campaign To Rebuild ‘Trust In Medicine, Science’
The American Medical Association will launch a national campaign called “Have You asked your Doctor?” to combat health misinformation and “rebuild trust in medicine.”
New Mayo–Microsoft collaboration may mean much for AI in healthcare
When Mayo Clinic and Microsoft announced last week that they’re partnering to develop a frontier AI model for healthcare, observers could see where Mayo’s expertise in advanced digital medicine would interest Microsoft. The Big Tech behemoth has not been coy about its healthcare ambitions.
The Probiotic Breakthrough for Natural Anxiety Relief and Better Mental Health
A surprising gut-brain discovery suggests that anxiety could one day be treated with specially designed probiotics. Could anxiety be shaped, at least in part, by tiny organisms living in the gut? Research from Duke-NUS Medical School and the National Neuroscience Institute of Singapore points to
Preventive care can help men catch health concerns early, Aspirus doctor says
Men’s Health Month is a reminder for men to schedule regular wellness visits and keep up with recommended screenings, an Aspirus Health doctor said. Men
Simone Biles Says Medical Scare Was Because of Health, Not Accident
Biles did not elaborate further on what caused the incident or whether it involved ongoing hospital treatment.
University of Southern Miss to add new science research facility
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WXXV)- The University of Southern Mississippi plans to add a new state of the art science research facility on the Hattiesburg campus. The Mississippi legislature appropriated $30 million to help make this transformative project possible. This investment will support research and discovery across the biological, biomedical, and environmental sciences while strengthening the university’s position as one of the...
Simone Biles resting after serious health scare: ‘Almost dying wasn’t on my bingo card’
Simone Biles suggested she came close to death after a medical emergency that left her in hospital
Wright State University and Premier Health receive $2.5M grant
For people needing help, having access to medical care in their community where they are can be a life saver.
Penn Medicine Doylestown Health taps new CEO
Craig Gronczewski, who previously worked at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, became CEO on June 1 after being named to the position last month.
Menopause event aims to go ‘beyond the scale’
The event is part of the center’s ongoing “Beyond the Scale” series and will feature two regional medical experts specializing in menopause care.
Medicare Advantage Continues To Grow Despite Health Insurer Exits
Medicare Advantage is the choice of 55% of eligible beneficiaries for health insurance for Americans 65 and older.
Chief medical officer swaps hospitals; new provost at LSU; hotel picks new executive chef
Take a look at some of the recent promotions and new hires announced at south Louisiana businesses.
Health workers at the epicenter of Congo's Ebola outbreak labor with little pay or rest
MONGBWALU, Congo (AP) — Dr. Richard Lokudu, the medical director of Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, has received barely any compensation for his work on the front line of one of Congo's deadliest Ebola virus outbreaks.
WHO urges targeted action to strengthen emergency workforce capacities for shared health risks across the Asia-Pacific region
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 11 June 2026 – At a time when the world is more interconnected than ever, the World Health Organization (WHO) is disseminating a comprehensive regional analysis of shared health risks across Asia and the Pacific, urging Member States to invest in enhancing workforce capacities regionwide to mitigate these risks and ensure health systems are better prepared to anticipate, tackle and withstand a range of crises and shocks. Over 100 delegates from 49 countries and areas in the Asia-Pacific region reviewed results from the regional risk analysis during the WHO-led Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APSHAF) Stakeholders Meeting in Malaysia. Synthesizing insights from 21 strategic risk assessments and more than 800 multisectoral experts, the regional analysis highlighted an urgent imperative: countries must proactively invest in emergency workforce preparedness to navigate a landscape where climate hazards, disease outbreaks and geophysical events increasingly overlap. These complex converging crises create devastating, compounding impacts on health systems and communities - reiterating the need for investing in a fit-for-purpose regional health workforce and multisectoral action. Key findings: an evolving risk landscape More than half of the participating countries ranked flooding, cyclones, dengue and pandemic-potential respiratory pathogens as being of high or very high risk, while antimicrobial resistance, landslides and gastroenteritis remain widespread concerns as well. “Given that 51% - over half - of these assessed hazards are deeply interconnected, isolated health interventions are no longer sufficient,” said Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific. “Extreme weather events like cyclones and floods directly trigger subsequent disease outbreaks, while environmental degradation - driven by sea-level rise, coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion - fuels health risks across the Pacific. Mitigating these cascading risks requires unified, cross-sectoral action linking environmental, agricultural and public health policies to build true regional resilience.” Priority recommendations for action To address critical vulnerabilities, WHO calls on Member States in the Asia-Pacific region to urgently prioritize the following strategic actions: Bridge workforce capacity gaps. Embed and standardize emergency preparedness within academia to promote regional workforce interoperability. Foster multisectoral coordination. Address ad-hoc taskforce responses and fragmented surge support through formalized contingency plans and standard operating procedures that are frequently updated and tested. Secure sustainable financing for emergencies. Overcome systemic barriers to access dedicated funding for both immediate anticipatory actions and long-term emergency preparedness initiatives. Enable emergency-ready primary health care. Embed emergency management into public health workforce readiness planning. Ensure that emergency planning is inclusive. Establish clear pathways for inclusive emergency planning that actively involves communities most at risk and other vulnerable groups. Optimize communication. Update risk communication and community engagement strategies, aligning them with seasonal risk calendars. Elevating workforce readiness to meet regional health risks While the gaps identified are significant, the Asia-Pacific region possesses solid foundational pillars, including dedicated clinicians, laboratory staff, rapid response teams, emergency medical teams and extensive community networks. However, to adequately address the compounding nature of modern crises, the various components of the emergency workforce must collaborate cohesively. True resilience depends entirely on transforming this currently fragmented workforce into a highly trained, interconnected and rapidly deployable asset. To achieve this, WHO is actively advancing regional workforce capacities through the Global Health Emergency Corps initiative. This initiative - supported by the Gates Foundation and Institute of Philanthropy - seeks to build a seamless network of emergency workforce across borders and sectors, ensuring that when a crisis strikes, a standardized, well-coordinated and trained workforce is immediately ready to respond. “Scaling up emergency workforce readiness is no longer optional,” said Dr Gina Samaan, Regional Emergency Director for WHO in the Western Pacific. “It is the definitive factor that will determine how effectively the Asia-Pacific region safeguards health and protects lives in an increasingly unpredictable future.” For more information, or to arrange media interviews, contact: Ara Johannes, WHO Western Pacific Health Emergencies Division: johannesa@who.int WHO Western Pacific Communications: wprocom@who.int
Flying with cannabis? TSA's new guidance comes with a major health warning
The TSA has updated medical marijuana guidelines, but experts warn against using cannabis on flights due to health effects at altitude.
Sheriff says things are 'back to business as usual' after salmonella poisoned 320 in Broome County jail
No one has died in the outbreak, but the county medical director said that was not guaranteed, and that addressing the outbreak took coordinated effort.
Ancient Chinese medicine could transform hair loss treatment
A traditional Chinese medicinal root used for over a thousand years is attracting new scientific attention for its potential to combat hair loss. Studies suggest Polygonum multiflorum can block harmful hormones, activate hair-growth signals, protect follicles, and boost blood flow to the scalp. Researchers say the herb’s effects align remarkably well with both ancient descriptions and modern hair biology.
Simone Biles reveals recent health scare: ‘Almost dying wasn’t on my bingo card’
Biles did not share any details of the medical episode she called "one of, if not the scariest experience of my life.”
The Trump administration makes it harder for some sick Americans to maintain Medicaid
Millions of sick Americans could have a tougher time retaining – or even signing up for – Medicaid coverage after the first-ever federal work requirement begins in January.
Health System Board hears presentations on Ehlers-Danlos center, at-home patient care
HSB is a Board committee composed of seven Board members that oversee the operations of the University’s Medical Center and provide strategic oversight for the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and U.Va. Community Health.
Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs linked to 30% lower breast cancer risk
A large study found that women taking GLP-1 drugs, the medication class behind Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound, were about 30% less likely to develop breast cancer. Researchers say the findings are promising but not yet proof, and clinical trials are now being planned to test whether these drugs could help prevent breast cancer.
Area healthcare workers rally at ‘Health Cuts Kill’ demonstration
Speakers spoke out against cuts to medicare and medicaid, as well as other federal funding reductions that, they say, will have devastating impacts.
Frederic Vasseur: Ferrari team principal hospitalised after medical checks at Monaco Grand Prix
Opinion | The next step in lowering health care costs: tackling administrative bloat
Readers and medical professionals respond to the final installment of Dr. Ashish K. Jha's series on health care costs.
Can alkaline water actually improve your health? Experts separate fact from fiction
Is alkaline water actually better for you? Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School experts weigh in on the claims, benefits and potential dangers.
UW diabetes researcher removed from conference by police
Steven Kahn, director of the UW Diabetes Research Center, was removed by police from a national conference as he and others handed out copies of an editorial.
Nevada proposes pausing licensing for new hospice and home-health providers while it probes possible fraud
Nevada is proposing a months-long moratorium on new licenses for hospice and home-health providers as well as a pause of new enrollments into the state’s Medicaid program while the authoritie...
Trinity School of Medical Laboratory Science achieves maximum accreditation
STEUBENVILLE — Trinity Health System’s School of Medical Laboratory Science Program has been awarded the maximum 10-year accreditation by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences. As the premier agency for ensuring the highest standards of education in clinical laboratory sciences, NAACLS grants this prestigious 10-year status only to programs that demonstrate exceptional educational […]
School of Medical Laboratory Science achieves maximum accreditation
STEUBENVILLE — Trinity Health System’s School of Medical Laboratory Science Program has been awarded the maximum 10-year accreditation by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences. As the premier agency for ensuring the highest standards of education in clinical laboratory sciences, NAACLS grants this prestigious 10-year status only to programs that demonstrate exceptional educational […]
Ohio Medicaid Program Suspends 49 Home Health Providers Amid National Fraud Crackdown
As federal officials intensify scrutiny of Medicaid-funded home-based care, Ohio has become the latest state to take aggressive enforcement action against
Diabetes researchers ejected from conference after criticizing White House
The scientists, including the editor of a leading journal, were handing out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s handling of biomedical research.
NC State Health Plan board approves Medicare Advantage plan benefit changes despite retiree concerns
Retirees on the state's Medicare Advantage will face higher out-of-pocket maximums next year, as well as higher copays for many medical services.
Citing fraud worries, Nevada pauses hospice and home health licensing, Medicaid enrollment
Nevada is putting a pause on licensing for hospice and home-health providers and new Nevada Medicaid enrollments, citing worries about fraud.
UT Health San Antonio named among Becker’s Top 50 ACOs to Know
UT Health San Antonio was recently named as one of the “Top 50 ACOs to Know” by Becker’s Hospital Review, a national recognition of its commitment to improving outcomes for traditional Medicare patients in the community.
This NYC LGBTQ+ Health Clinic Is Giving Away the Ultimate Pride Month Survival Kit
Callen-Lorde is offering LGBTQ+ New Yorkers free kits packed with HIV prevention medication, sexual health supplies, and overdose reversal drugs throughout June.
Looking back: O’Donnell School of Public Health commencement: Center Times Plus, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
The Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health (OSPH) celebrated its second commencement ceremony on May 13 in the Tom and Lula Gooch Auditorium, marking an exciting milestone for the school and its newest graduates from the Master of Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science in Health Informatics (M.S.H.I.), and Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (M.S.C.I.) programs.
This NYC LGBTQ+ health clinic is giving away the ultimate Pride Month survival kit
Callen-Lorde is offering LGBTQ+ New Yorkers free kits packed with HIV prevention medication, sexual health supplies, and overdose reversal drugs throughout June.
CT community health workers still waiting for Medicaid support
A 2023 law requiring CT's Medicaid program to pay for services provided by community health workers has yet to be implemented.
UW School of Medicine receives major donation for new scholarship
A gift from the Franke family will help cover half of tuition for about 30 UW medical students.
Miller School of Medicine Faculty Elected to Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida
University of Miami Miller School faculty are recognized for their impact in research, innovation and leadership.
Surgical technologist apprenticeship helps stay at home mom rejoin workforce
A stay-at-home mom of three home-schooled children, Rebecca Johnson was looking to rejoin the workforce, preferably in the medical field.
Vanderbilt Health Pets of the Day: Freddy and Cooper
Today’s first Dog of the Day is Freddy, submitted by Beth Piazza of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. “Freddy was adopted on Valentine’s Day of 2024 from the Nashville Humane Association. He is the cuddliest 90-pound lap dog.“ Today’s second Dog of the Day is Cooper, submitted by Brandie Taylor of Medicine. “Cooper is a 14 year old chocolate lab. He loves eating and going to get pup cups!” Freddy and Cooper were featured in the June 9, 2026, edition of MyVUMC News. To see the archived collection of Vanderbilt Health Pets of the Day, go to: https://news.vumc.org/section/voice/pets-vumc/. Pet photos wanted! The Vanderbilt Health Pets of the Day are posted to the Voice section of Vanderbilt Health News and included in regular editions of the MyVUMC News newsletter, which is published twice a week by Vanderbilt Health News and Communications. Now through July 6, we especially want to see photos of your pets enjoying spring and summer. That might be having fun at the lake or beach, hanging out in the backyard, lying on the couch, or in the case of a pet fish, just living the life aquatic (we’re not too strict about what constitutes enjoying spring and summer). If you have a pet picture you would like to send in for consideration, go to the submission form here and follow the guidelines.
E-bike safety; lung cancer treatment and prevention; keeping CMA Festival attendees safe; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources
WKRN News 2 interviewed Jeffrey Upperman, MD, FACS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, about e-bike related injuries following the recent death of a Brentwood High student and a proposal to require safety training before students could ride a bike on a school campus in Williamson County. Fabien Maldonado, MD, MSc,Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Surgery, was on WTVF News Channel 5‘s live studio show, “Openline,” with host Ben Hall, to discuss lung cancer, treatment and prevention. WSMV’s “Today In Nashville” program hosted Vanderbilt LifeFlight paramedic/flight nurse practitioner Tony Smith to talk about safety for the CMA Festival. The New York Times reporter Carl Zimmer interviewed James Crowe, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, for a story about the race to find vaccines and treatments as Ebola spreads. The Vanderbilt Health News release about the pilot clinical trial conducted by Vanderbilt Health and Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc., that confirms the safety of ifetroban and supports the further development of the drug to prevent cancer metastasis, was picked up by Reuters, Stock Titan,and others. Women We Admire has named Lee Ann Liska, President and Chief Operating Officer, to its list of top women leaders of Nashville for 2026. Radiology Business, Aunt Minnie, Bioengineer, and Imaging Technology News covered the study from Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, the Mildred Thornton Stahlman Professor in Rural Health and professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, that found Black and Hispanic people, while known to be far more apt to have dementia, are significantly less apt than other racial and ethnic groups to show Alzheimer’s pathology on brain scans. STAT News interviewed Deva Sharma, MD, Transfusion Medicine & Hematology-Oncology, for a story about more patients requesting unvaccinated blood and what it means for the medical system at large. Yahoo! Health reporter Korin Miller interviewed Gitanjali Srivastava, MD, Director of Obesity Medicine, for a story about how semaglutide and tirzepatide compare. William Schaffner, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine, was quoted by several news outlets about public health issues, including: NBC News (new COVID vaccinations); Medscape (pneumonia and sepsis); and CNN (protection from contagious viruses). Shelbyville Times-Gazette is repurposing Jessica Pasley’s July 2025 Vanderbilt Health News story on tick-borne illnesses as a front-page story.
Free health screenings offered Saturday in Columbus
The 26th annual Healthy Community Day is Saturday.The event,hosted by Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, allows residents to check on their health and well bein
Brain-Targeted Drug Discovery Barriers Drive Deep Science Ventures and Medicines Discovery Catapult Deal
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Neurology, over 40% of the global population is living with CNS diseases.
State Health Plan to vote on price hikes for older state workers, retirees
People on the Medicare Advantage version of the State Health Plan could soon face higher drug prices, copays and deductibles as the state struggles to pay for rising healthcare costs.
Medicare Advantage in 2026: Enrollment Update and Key Trends
More than half (55%) of eligible Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage in 2026. To better understand trends in the growth of the Medicare Advantage program, this brief provides current information about enrollment, including by plan type and firm
Scientists discover why ozempic may not work for some people
Scientists have identified genetic variants that may make some people less responsive to GLP-1 drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes. Roughly 10% of the population carries these variants, which appear to cause a mysterious form of "GLP-1 resistance." In several clinical trials, carriers were significantly less likely to reach healthy blood sugar targets while taking GLP-1 medications.
Popular Blood Pressure Meds Linked To Kidney Damage Risk In Type 2 Diabetes
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, June 5, 2026 (HealthDay News) — A common class of blood pressure medications might contribute to kidney damage among people with type 2 diabetes, a new study says. Dihydropyridine calcium-channel blockers (DCCBs) work by relaxing blood vessels, and are ...
Trump administration escalates legal push for medical records of trans minors
Parents said in court papers they’re worried that having records disclosed could expose them to retaliation by the Trump administration.
Millions of Kids Could Lose Insurance as GOP Healthcare Cuts Start To Bite
Big cuts to healthcare programs in the 2025 GOP budget law are creating an affordability crunch for many Americans: Higher health insurance premiums. Confusion about whom Medicaid will cover under the new rules. KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner explains how the changes could leave nearly 2 million children uninsured.
How living and practicing medicine abroad complicated my beliefs about universal health care systems
“I believe deeply in universal health care. But universal care must also mean universal safety and accountability, not merely universal access.”
Healthy mom nearly died after dismissing sepsis symptoms as the flu
In 2015, Audrey Wiggins was a healthy 31-year-old when she thought she’d come down with the flu. Instead, her condition spiraled into a severe case of sepsis that left her in the ICU for 10 days, including five days in a medically induced coma.
Emergency physicians lead the league in burnout—but when they quit, it’s for another reason
Among all medical specialties, emergency medicine is the single most likely to burn out its practitioners.
Spanberger signs bills banning weapons in mental health, developmental care facilities
Gov. Spanberger signed legislation prohibiting firearms and other dangerous weapons in medical facilities that provide mental health and developmental services.
RFK Jr.'s health department is seeking Americans' medical records. Here's what's going on
The Health and Human Services Department wants to access medical records, but it's not tied to reports of autism research, the department says.
Sanford Health to hold Native Americans with Stethoscopes event
Sanford Health of Bemidji will host its annual Native Americans with Stethoscopes health care career exploration event from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 20, at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center.
SGMC Health EMS Receives Service of the Year Award for Region 8
SGMC Health's Emergency Medical Services (EMS) was recently recognized as the Region 8 EMS Service of the Year at the Georgia EMS regional awards banquet.